Judge denies RIAA request to reconsider attorneys’ fees award

The RIAA will be writing a large check to the attorneys of Debbie Foster, a …

A federal judge has denied the RIAA's motion for reconsideration of his attorneys' fees award in Capitol v. Foster. Calling the RIAA's motion for reconsideration one of "very limited appropriateness," Judge Lee R. West found fault with just about every one of the RIAA's arguments.

Capitol v. Foster involves an Oklahoma woman targeted as part of the record industry's driftnet of file-sharing legislation. Last July, Foster won, when the case was dismissed with prejudice. Her victory opened up the door for her to recover attorneys' fees from the RIAA, and Judge West granted her motion for an award of fees in February, citing in part the RIAA's attempt to paint her as guilty of "secondary copyright infringement" in his decision.

As one might expect, the award was not greeted with much enthusiasm by the record industry, in no small part due to the ramifications it could have for other file-sharing litigation. A couple of weeks after the judge's ruling, the RIAA asked him to reconsider his decision, citing among other things the "premature end of discovery," being denied the chance to prove their claims of secondary infringement, and its belief that an attorneys' fees award rewarded the defendant for deciding to litigate long after the court battle should have been settled.

In his ruling, Judge West disagreed strongly with the RIAA's interpretation of events. With regard to the secondary infringement claims, Judge West found that "Based on the limited record and the fact that the plaintiffs could not point to a single case finding secondary liability for copyright infringement under similar circumstances, the Court concluded the plaintiffs' secondary copyright terms appeared to be marginal and indisputably untested."

The judge also ridiculed the RIAA's assertion that it was denied the chance to prove secondary infringement, noting that the record labels moved voluntarily to dismiss the case instead of proceeding to a trial.

Currently, the RIAA and Debbie Foster are engaged in discovery over the reasonableness of Foster's attorneys' fees, and the RIAA was forced to turn over their own billing records to Foster's attorneys. The RIAA had fought vigorously to keep those records from being revealed, saying that their disclosure could materially affect other file-sharing cases. Judge West agreed and issued a protective order instructing Foster's attorneys to maintain the confidentiality of the RIAA's billing records.